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I felt the opposite that the enemy variety was much better than HL2 + Episodes, and I think part of this was attributed to seeing the Xen infestation everywhere, something we didn't see in HL2 and the Episodes. We even got entirely new great enemies like the Lightning Dogs (or "Runner" as what their entity is referred to as, but I kind of prefer Lightning Dog with that whole thing of them limping and whimpering Great Wolf Sif style). The shelled headcrabs (and zombies) were a great new addition. The heavy combine soldiers felt very new and actually pretty threatening. On hard difficulty they get pretty close pretty quickly and are scary as you scramble to reload behind cover. And of course you can't forget Jeff.
It still didn't match the enemy variety of HL1, but it came pretty close, even though the numbers don't really add up. It's hard to explain it being more of a feeling than actual numbers, haha.
Wow....the wear and tear, and blood on the HEV suit is interesting. You couldn't see that very well during the G-man's speech.Found them on reddit, prob pulled from datamining.
I think saying that you never really got tired of seeing one enemy and that every time there was always a new enemy or combination of enemies so it felt "new" and not like "oh its this again".
Yeah, that pretty much quantifies it.
Both HL1 and HL2 often had phases of fighting military/combine for a while, and then fighting zombies/xen aliens for a while, occasionally having all three factions fighting each other. In Alyx I felt we did see more of Combine and Xen aliens at the same time. There were all those parts where you hear combine fighting zombies and walk in on them, and choose to either watch them kill some zombies for you or just start shooting. There was frequently more stuff like showing Barnacles preying on headcrabs (The Northern star for instance, you see Barnacles constantly catching poison headcrabs)
Not seeing a problem with enemy variety.
You have two issues to contend with - having enemy variety fit the actual game narrative, and having a balance for a game designed specifically as a showcase of VR accessible to all.
Tons of enemies pressuring players, or so many that knowing how to defeat them is too challenging is a potential issue. Then having narrative reasons for these enemies, their location, being in that time period and not others etc etc. I just don't see the problem.
Only thing that bugged me was enemy AI again.
It had some golden moments that I imagine were scripted - combine stepping on cars, moving around properly, flanking if I tried to reload or aim at a spot in anticipation, taking ammo I dropped etc
But a lot of the time enemies were too sparse, and stayed relatively docile or still in larger environments.
I imagine this fits in with being accessible for this game, but I really hope they move away from that at take a more engaging approach to the enemies in future games, at the very least via difficulty options
You have two issues to contend with - having enemy variety fit the actual game narrative, and having a balance for a game designed specifically as a showcase of VR accessible to all.
Tons of enemies pressuring players, or so many that knowing how to defeat them is too challenging is a potential issue. Then having narrative reasons for these enemies, their location, being in that time period and not others etc etc. I just don't see the problem.
Only thing that bugged me was enemy AI again.
It had some golden moments that I imagine were scripted - combine stepping on cars, moving around properly, flanking if I tried to reload or aim at a spot in anticipation, taking ammo I dropped etc
But a lot of the time enemies were too sparse, and stayed relatively docile or still in larger environments.
I imagine this fits in with being accessible for this game, but I really hope they move away from that at take a more engaging approach to the enemies in future games, at the very least via difficulty options
Pretty much. G-man put Gordon on the train relocating citizens to City 17, and Gordon was walking through the checkpoint about to go to Nova Prospekt when Barney was there under cover helping people escape.
Wait, you thought the enemy variety is better than HL2 + Episodes? Curious to hear why you think so, HL2+Episodes objectively has more enemies and of greater variety.
Here's a list of HL2 enemies that don't show up in Alyx:
Bullsquid
Antlion Guard
Fast Zombies
Poison Zombie
Zombine
Fast Headcrabs
Hunters
Dropship
Gunship
APC
Sentry Gun
Several types of Combine soldiers
Overwatch Sniper
Alyx gave us:
Few different types of Combine soldiers
Lightning Dog/Lightning Zombie
Armored Headcrab
Jeff
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's it for new enemies in HL: Alyx.
Found them on reddit, prob pulled from datamining.
Nice, so we finally know what gordon looks like during HL2.
You are right, there is objectively more of a variety in HL2 + Episodes. I think eonden explained it best.
The other part of it is that there was more variety in locales in Alyx than HL2 for sure. Almost every single area in HL2 + Episodes looked like it came out of the human world. Not that that is a bad thing, it's not, and there was plenty of variety in HL2. We saw city, Ravenholm, the Citadel, the highway/beach, Nova Prospekt, and then the more countryside environments of Episode 2. In Alyx (while smaller in scale, and sort of had to be being a VR game), went through a lot. There was a lot of city and old buildings, but stuff like the Northern Star Hotel, or the sewers in Chapter 3 infested with Xen gunk and poison headcrabs in the dark, the whole distillery in the Jeff chapter, the zoo was something really different and special.
Yeah, I would say the only part where I was like "oh god more Combine?" was in chapter 10, but then you had a lot more escalation and it felt more like a crescendo and then chapter 11 turned those combat parts in a diferent direcitons.
The locales (and even more the Xen fauna/flora) was just impressive and made me really want someone to make a walking experience of an alien planet for VR.
Yeah, I can't disagree more on variety of locales. Especially if we toss the episodes in. From the city, to the sewers, canals, Coastal areas, Mines, Ravenholm, Nova Prospekt, Antlion tunnels, City Ruins, Citadel, Combine Palace, Forested areas, etc.
Half-Life Alyx gave us Sewers, Apartments, an admittedly really cool Xenified Hotel & Distillery, industrial area, a zoo, and the vault. Some really cool areas for sure, but certainly not the variety you find in HL2. Also, they were all pretty small areas, nothing expansive. HL2 offered a lot larger, more open area.
Each area also threw in
new gameplayy elements to keep the gameplay fresh.
Air boat in Canals, muscle car in coastline and forest, along with the big container magnet thing to swing at the combine, sentry guns to setup in Nova Prospekt along with the big bait to control antlions, cool traps to interact with in Ravenholm, and physics puzzles sprinkled throughout. Not to mention, a metric shit ton more scripted events and scenes.
Really felt like a heck of a lot more to see and do in HL2.
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Two things about a potential sequel with Gordon as the player character: he won't have the gloves and he won't speak, right? Both of those things are pretty big obstacles after the foundation they've set up with HL: Alyx. I wonder what they'll do with that.
I would buy an artbook of this game in a fucking second holy shit. All the different kinds of zombies and combine suits... so fucking cool.
I would buy an artbook of this game in a fucking second holy shit. All the different kinds of zombies and combine suits... so fucking cool.
Easy enough to add an upgrade for the gloves and call it the Mark VI HEV Suit
Not sure how much truth to this there is, and it could be made up, but uhhh, we might have an identity (or lack thereof, and deconfirmation of it being Mossman) for shadowed scientist woman.
I know Tyler from VNN said he was working on datamining HL Alyx and said there was a lot of interesting stuff there, such as the trip mines being placable were a cut weapon.
I know Tyler from VNN said he was working on datamining HL Alyx and said there was a lot of interesting stuff there, such as the trip mines being placable were a cut weapon.
These are games designed with gameplay first and then have stories wrapped around them. They are not story first projects. That is why finishing off a cliffhanger was never enough to motivate Valve to make a sequel. That isn't why they make games.
This ending simply resets the stage. Changes expectations. Removes people's ideas of what a Half Life 3 would be. Lets new writers shape the future of the franchise instead of being beholden to choices made over a decade ago by different people who no longer work there. They aren't cornered into making the next game some Half Life 2 in the Arctic adventure that it was originally going to be.
It isn't what they had in mind when they started this project. It is what Wolpaw and company came to later on, which allowed them to tie it more strongly into the previous game and give them more freedom in the future if it ever came to that.
I guess I can see why people would be disappointed by that but honestly, even as a longtime Half Life fan, I have absolutely no stake in having to see the ending of Ep 2 carried on in its original form. I'd rather Valve feel creatively inspired to work on Half Life again than it feel like an anchor around their necks.
This ending simply resets the stage. Changes expectations. Removes people's ideas of what a Half Life 3 would be. Lets new writers shape the future of the franchise instead of being beholden to choices made over a decade ago by different people who no longer work there. They aren't cornered into making the next game some Half Life 2 in the Arctic adventure that it was originally going to be.
It isn't what they had in mind when they started this project. It is what Wolpaw and company came to later on, which allowed them to tie it more strongly into the previous game and give them more freedom in the future if it ever came to that.
I guess I can see why people would be disappointed by that but honestly, even as a longtime Half Life fan, I have absolutely no stake in having to see the ending of Ep 2 carried on in its original form. I'd rather Valve feel creatively inspired to work on Half Life again than it feel like an anchor around their necks.
No way they would have him speak. They can just throw the gloves on him and call it an upgrade. I still think the gravity gun would be fun in VR. Picking up big explosive barrels and saw blades and chucking them at enemies in VR could be fun.
What they could be planning is to use Alyx as the protagonist of the VR games, and Gordon in traditional shooter entries.
I'm not so keen on this honestly. As far as I'm concerned, VR is the future for the series. But moreso, unless they have a very clear vision and plan from the outset, dividing their attention is probably not the best move especially coming out of such a long development drought.
I was much less worried about the story once I heard the Campo Santo folks were pitching in on Alyx, honestly. Have loved their games, stories, and character work for a long time.
It's a shame they didn't make the cut, they were one of my favorite explosives in HL1 (even though they could be difficult to use on mobile enemies). Would've been fun to steal all of yours from live mines that you have to hack to disable, peel off the surface, and then tow in your backpack.
No bullsquids in HL2 (sadly). The Snark in the jar makes me hope we'll be able so use those again, they were always one of my favorite weapons in the series. BRING BACK THE SQUEAK GRENADES.
So I guess the next thing to look forward to in the near future will be the Geoff Keighley Final Hours of Half-Life Alyx. He did announce it the day the game was announced.
I wasn't really that excited at first. As I said I think their games are amazing, and I wasn't one of those that thought Firewatch had a bad ending, but I was skeptical becuase I'm not sure how good of a fit they are for Half LIfe.
There's a difference between 'mystery-box' writing and the sort of quirky sci-fi writing Laidlaw did, and I think Vanaman and Jake's projects have usually been reliant on very mystery-boxy tropes, the kind of storytelling where you introduce something mysterious early on and lead the reader until the end and you suddenly have to come up with all the answers that don't you hadn't initially planned.
That's a gamble. I think this ending still has some slight mystery boxy stuff about it, particularly the Gordon tease, but in the end if they can get away from all this time-travel for a good chunk of the next storyline, and focus on what they're good at; the characterization and dialogue, they're gonna make a good Half Life.
I think the more closed in and intimate areas in HLA and relatively few enemy types isn't all that bad, considering VR is still in its relative infancy. Big, wide-open areas would honestly be overwhelming and tedious when you can't move at speeds Gordon Freeman can in previous Half Life games, and the sense of scale in VR helps a lot to make up for areas that would seem smaller on a flat screen. Needing to deal with all sorts of enemies also might be overwhelming, considering the relative difficulty curve in learning how to handle existing enemy types using guns that require more manual handling to properly use. Also, Alyx does not have the HEV suit, she is not nearly as durable as Gordon is. Even short bursts of gunfire can almost kill her.
I don't think the next Half-Life game will be a flatscreen game. Valve has already worked a ton on figuring out how to make a proper Half-Life game in VR, and they implied we'd be in the driver's seat for a VR game starring Freeman from that ending, it would be an absolute waste to go back when there's so much to expand upon with the sheer possibilities provided by a VR game with Gordon in the HEV suit. And frankly, I don't know if I want the series to go back to being a traditional FPS.
Honestly, I think Gordon Freeman staying a silent protagonist is not a sure thing, either. Sure, he was silent in the post-credits scene, but that was barely a minute long, and we don't know what the writers will do when it comes to him, especially the folks at Campo Santo, who might prefer giving the first-person protagonist an actual personality.
I don't think the next Half-Life game will be a flatscreen game. Valve has already worked a ton on figuring out how to make a proper Half-Life game in VR, and they implied we'd be in the driver's seat for a VR game starring Freeman from that ending, it would be an absolute waste to go back when there's so much to expand upon with the sheer possibilities provided by a VR game with Gordon in the HEV suit. And frankly, I don't know if I want the series to go back to being a traditional FPS.
Honestly, I think Gordon Freeman staying a silent protagonist is not a sure thing, either. Sure, he was silent in the post-credits scene, but that was barely a minute long, and we don't know what the writers will do when it comes to him, especially the folks at Campo Santo, who might prefer giving the first-person protagonist an actual personality.
I guess someone else has reset the clock.
It's HLVR2 conspiracy time.
Say what you will about Tyler (and believe me, I don't buy everything he says either), he was spot on about all the HLVR/Alyx stuff before Alyx was even announced. He also had reports that a Left 4 Dead VR was coming in the immediate future, it's not.
I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I think he said something more like Valve was working with the Boneworks dev and it was sort of a prototype for it. I don't think the latter was true.
At the very least I know he still sticks to his guns about it being a "spiritual" Half-Life game.
not the HL VR title, but A HL title iirc? or "a secret" HL title or something.
What an excellent ending. The way its all revealed was brilliant. Opens up the franchise to much more interesting avenues.
Edit: I don't really understand the criticisms of time travel. G-Man placed Gordon in so many places at very specific times to alter events in previous games, this is time travel, we were just never shown it so specifically. It's been obvious to me for years that the G-Man sees time linerarly, or is it just me? Someone with all his powers must be able to. His powers seem completely 100% consistent with what was shown before.
Edit: I don't really understand the criticisms of time travel. G-Man placed Gordon in so many places at very specific times to alter events in previous games, this is time travel, we were just never shown it so specifically. It's been obvious to me for years that the G-Man sees time linerarly, or is it just me? Someone with all his powers must be able to. His powers seem completely 100% consistent with what was shown before.
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No he didn't, his reporting on L4D3/VR was that Valve stopped working on it years ago which is something Valve later confirmed. He did have a pretty badly worded tweet which basically said he got confirmation the information he had about it was real, other journalists took it as him saying that it was coming out in the future when he didn't actually say that. He did later admit that was a very badly worded tweet (and it was a very badly worded tweet).
I didn't realize that, I thought he had said something recently about them working on both at the same time (Alyx and L4D3/VR) but I am definitely confusing it with what you're talking about.
I wonder if we ever will get an L4D VR one day. I could see a Portal VR happening (they even said they were working with Portal VR but scrapped it because it's too disorienting for VR), but maybe make it where you yourself don't go through the portals, you just put objects through them, or stick your arms in them, etc.
I think a Gordon VR game is coming though. I agree with the suggestions in this thread that the HEV suit will probably get an upgrade to have the Gravity Gloves built in.
God, I hope Valve keeps those guys as far away as possible from the HL universe.
I didn't care that much for BW when it initially came out and put it on the shelf because of the lack of saves. I tried it again after beating HL:A which cemented my opinion that it 's just an annoying pile of junk. Ugly, uninspired levels, bad design decisions in pretty much every area. None of the marquee physics stuff is enjoyable, and the rest of the normal features have been done better in other games (climbing/shooting/platforming)
I was interested in Boneworks before it came out, but then I heard that for even people with "VR legs" it was very motion sickness inducing, that had me worried. Watching more footage of it, seeing stuff like the arms looking rather janky turned me off of the game. I considered getting it at some point and trying it for less than two hours and refunding if the motion sickness really was that bad.
Lots of people rail against "floating hands" in VR games, and I think most of those people have not played VR games. The arms in Boneworks look awkward and out of place as all hell.
I really want a L4D VR game. That's one where I do actually think it would work well as a VR optional game since it's mostly co-op. Not sure how they'd handle playing as the infected in that scenario though.
I've been playing Boneworks and it's... Fine. I haven't gotten motion sick or anything and I still feel woozy in things like Stormlands. It's absolutely janky but there's a lot more environmental interaction than what I've found in Alyx. Granted that's mostly because that's the entire schtick; Everything is in service of you picking up anything and clambering around for the sake of it. My ideal game would honestly be Alyx + the environmental interactivity of Boneworks. The arms and legs in Boneworks should absolutely go though.
Also the slow-mo makes fighting Boneworks' version of headcrabs immensely satisfying. I snatch those little fuckers outta the air and bash them together like I'm the Hulk.
Yeah, when boneworks came out I kinda had VR legs but the way the physics move your body outside of your control make it a really tough game. I suffer from motion sickness so free movement in VR is something I do in little chunks but have been getting better at (played all of Alyx with the free movement with multiple multi hour sessions) but Boneworks is tough becuase of how your arm can get caught on something and stop you from moving, or you can get pushed back by something or how awkward it can be to climb up some things.
I stopped playing Boneworks when I realised there were no mid-level checkpoints or saves and some levels were LOOOOONG. Like I'd have to take a break and just leave the game running in the headset while I recovered.
The physicsy stuff with enemy interaction and melee and guns and all that is cool but I feel it'd be way better with floaty hands and no physics messing up your view.
I stopped playing Boneworks when I realised there were no mid-level checkpoints or saves and some levels were LOOOOONG. Like I'd have to take a break and just leave the game running in the headset while I recovered.
The physicsy stuff with enemy interaction and melee and guns and all that is cool but I feel it'd be way better with floaty hands and no physics messing up your view.
He said it spiritually shared a lot of DNA with Half-Life, not that it was actually an HL game.
I historically haven't had great VR legs and didn't have much problem in BW. To its credit, it runs well and I think that plays a part in reducing nausea.
The arms in BW aren't good but the bigger distraction to me is the legs, especially when climbing.
Making the character body "physical" has really bad consequences other than just goofy looks. For example, every time I turn a door knob, the entire world shifts up or down, presumably because my real world hand isn't pivoting perfectly in place. Very unpleasant sensation. Lots of interactions cause the world perspective to shift unexpectedly and I think that's totally unacceptable.
I might have to give BW a try, but yeah that sounds really bad with the physical body. I think most VR devs seems to realize that floating hands are a-okay and better generally. You know where the rest of your body is, you just need to see what your hands are grabbing.
There was a video from Tyler McVicker that said at a Steam Dev Days one year, they talked at length about implementing opening doors in VR, and that ended up being what was used in Alyx.
Physical hands catching on objects worked really well in Alyx though.
I wouldn't be surprised if Valve scrambled in the next few years to put out a couple of more VR games to further push VR and L4D is a good candidate, especically since apparently the version that did exist worked in both VR and regular flat monitors.
There was also an augmented reality version of L4D that was in the works, VNN did an interview with Jeri Ellsworth who was the former head of hardware development at Valve and she talked about it. Here's a cut down version of the interview (since the full thing is over an hour) but it's pretty interesting:
I made comments in the other thread about this (accidentally unspoilered them first because I thougth that was the spoiler thread, but I fixed it). I'm glad we got the ending in the final product, it was better than this one (obviously ignoring the unfinished nature of it). It seemed like Alyx was never led to believe Gordon was in the vault, because she just asked the G-man if the briefcase was the weapon or he was the weapon or what. It seemed like she didn't know who Gordon was. Also interesting they showed unconscious Gordon in the Episode 2 ending scene.Somehow Tyler at VNN got his hands on an early build of the game. Here's the original ending clip
Also noticed that the Gman model is significantly different than the one in retail. Looks a lot like his HL2 versionSomehow Tyler at VNN got his hands on an early build of the game. Here's the original ending clip
Finished a couple days ago, the ending was absolutely amazing. I love where they took the story and how they told it. The G-Man speech with Alex was masterfully done with the audio and visuals. Turning your head to follow his voice then turning back around and he's there staring at you with those creepy ass eyes, best realization of the character yet. Picking up the Crowbar at the end felt great, the sound it made and the feedback the index controls gave you felt incredibly satisfying.
Link isn't working for me. Was it not archived?Somehow Tyler at VNN got his hands on an early build of the game. Here's the original ending clip
Damn, doesn't look like it. Hopefully somebody will mirror it later :(